You are all a lousy bunch of racists, and to imply otherwise would make you racist liars.
OK, this might not be entirely true, but skin color is one of the easiest differences to spot, and human beings love to categorize (just ask Aristotle). Most people have ideas about people who are different from them. Ideas they are afraid to admit in today’s politically correct world.
When I was training to serve at a fairly large restaurant, where the slight majority of employees were Mexican or Hispanic, one of my first tables was a party of 12 Hispanic customers. They tipped me something like $6 on a $180 check.
When I told one of my coworkers what had happened, he told me that he was not surprised, and that I shouldn’t expect even a 10 percent tip from large parties of Mexicans. This server was a first generation Mexican-American.
I began to wonder if this was one of those things that Mexicans were “allowed” to say while someone as pasty as I am was not. This was not the case. Not only was it made abundantly clear to me that the vast majority of the servers held this belief, but also that none of the Mexican employees took offense to the notion.
This doesn’t change the fact that a server would be immediately terminated if a high-level manager overheard such a statement. The belief is clearly outside of what is politically correct and can certainly be considered a prejudice—one held by many people who would perhaps not consider themselves prejudiced.
You can choose to ignore this, even if you have worked in the food service industry. You can choose to ignore the data suggesting that people are most comfortable living around other people of the same race, in spite of the plethora of peer-reviewed articles about self-segregation in the Auraria Library. Libraries, after all, are easy to ignore.
But can you ignore Dave Chappelle?
When the first episode of the short-lived Chappelle’s Show aired in 2003, it ended with a sketch a about a blind white supremacist who didn’t know he was black. In less than 10 minutes, Chappelle and co-writer Neal Brennan not only managed to fit the notorious N-word into the sketch 17 times, but found time to say something derogatory about Jews, homosexuals, Arabs, Mexicans, and the Chinese as well.
The show would continue to use a generous amount of racial humor. From a black guy buying a semi truck filled with a lifetime supply of menthol cigarettes after receiving reparations, to an “educated guess” hotline operator that told you your future based on racial stereotypes, Chappelle had a winning formula of relying on stereotypes for laughs.
By October 2004, the Chappelle’s Show Season One: Uncensored DVD box set had achieved record sales, toppling The Simpsons with over 2 million units sold, according to TVShowsOnDVD.com. A USA Today article entitled “Chappelle: Laughing All The Way To The Bank” claimed Chappelle had signed a contract with Comedy Central worth roughly $35 million for two more seasons after the conclusion of the first, and that the second season averaged 3.1 million viewers. Millions of people were laughing and relating to the material. Racism sells.
So who buys?
I’m not accusing everyone of being a practitioner of discrimination, or a subscriber to the idea of a “master race.” Most of us know better. But we do recognize, and often hyperbolize, differences in race.
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